


Open Hands

by Primarybufferpanel (ArwenLune)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Jedi Maul (Star Wars), Jedi Order Positivity, Jedi Temple (Star Wars), Redeemed Maul, Temple Run obstacle course, jedi order
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:01:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29685744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/pseuds/Primarybufferpanel
Summary: "A good Jedi, Knight Maul is. Much to teach you, he has."Ahsoka Tano tried not to let her skepticism show.
Relationships: Darth Maul & Ahsoka Tano
Comments: 18
Kudos: 85





	Open Hands

**Author's Note:**

> My list of works is just a list of 'AUs where Maul finds some happiness' at this point and I'm okay with that.

"A good Jedi, Knight Maul is. Much to teach you, he has."

Ahsoka Tano tried not to let her skepticism show. There were all kinds of rumours among the padawans about the fearsome Zabrak knight with the stark red and black markings and the golden eyes. He stood out by his appearance and taciturn manner, and that made him a subject of fascination among the padawans.

They whispered that he used to be a Sith. That he was still a Sith, only now in disguise. That he'd been cut in half by a Jedi. That he'd killed that Jedi afterward. That he'd once caught a lizard in the room of a thousand fountains and ate it right there and then, bones, skin and all. (Ahsoka was not as horrified by that one as some of her fellow padawans. She ate raw prey herself, when it suited her, so could not fault him for not wasting a good meal.)

Rumours also said that Knight Maul hated younglings and padawans and never spoke to anybody below knight level. That nobody had ever seen him smile. That he never addressed anybody as Master, not even Grand Masters Yoda or Windu. They said one of his hearts was made of beskar and the other one of ice, which sounded anatomically improbable, but Ahsoka didn't know enough about Dathomir Zabraks to dismiss it. They said he was responsible for preventing the assassination of half the Alderaan royal house. And that he'd once told Grand Master Windu to 'kark right the kark off' and lived to tell the tale. Ahsoka supposed that if he'd survived being cut in half, a mere cutting look, even one by Master Windu, wasn't going to quell the Zabrak knight.

They also said he'd been fearsome at Geonosis, a whirlwind with his gold saberstaff cutting through the enemy lines. That he'd shielded injured Jedi.

He hadn't protected Ahsoka's master though. Master Sacul Handaya had died there on Geonosis, though Ahsoka hadn't been told the details of how. Perhaps the lack of information was to protect her, but hoped that reality hadn't been as bad as her imagination made it. The broken master-padawan bond was slowly beginning to fade, but she still ached with the loss. Healer Koora said that it was natural for her to grieve, even healthy, and that she should not feel rushed to move on or forget Master Sacul.

Unfortunately, the Republic now found itself at war, and the Jedi Order suddenly had different priorities. The first Masters had already gone out to take control of the clone army, and many more were in preparation to go.

The padawans staying behind would be taught classes by the Masters staying behind, the older and less martial Masters. While nobody was willing to say it out loud, the Masters who could prepare Ahsoka for her knight trials, the ones who could teach her duelling and diplomacy under pressure and all the skills a Peacekeeper Jedi Knight needed, those Masters were all going out to lead troops.

Nobody knew how long the war might last. Master Yoda was leaving her the choice to refuse, but if Ahsoka decided she would not apprentice for Knight Maul, there was every chance she would be too old to be taken on as padawan by the time the war was over. Plus, it felt like the Force wanted her out there. She could contribute, it did not feel right to stay at the temple when so many others wouldn't.

It was a choice, but it didn't feel like much of one.

"Yes, Master Yoda," she replied dutifully.

"Serve closely with Master Koon, Knight Maul will. And encouraged to keep speaking to Healer Koora, you are."

That lifted her spirits a little. She loved Master Koon, who was her Finder, and she knew he would not let her be mistreated if Knight Maul was as austere as she feared. If it didn't work out, perhaps he'd even take her on himself. And if she could keep up her bi-weekly conversations with the mind healer, that would give her somebody to vent to.

"Thank you, Master Yoda," she said, a little more animated.

She arrived at the practice room where she'd been told to find her new Master and took a moment to straighten her robes and the fall of her lekku. The few times she'd seen Knight Maul in the temple, usually in the company of Master Koon, he'd acknowledged her with a curt nod, waiting patiently while Master Koon spoke with her. It had always made Ahsoka a little nervous, that forbidding figure in impeccable dark grey robes. Was the grey symbol for where he stood in the Force? Then again it was hard to imagine Master Koon teaming up with him if that were the case. She supposed the more traditional brown might have clashed with his colouring.

She reminded herself of Master Sacul's words that everybody had something to teach, if you were looking to learn. And Knight Maul was a formidable duellist; if rumour served, there was nobody in the Order who had mastered as many different forms. Ahsoka would learn whatever he could teach her on her own way to knighthood, if for no other reason than to honour those wise words of Master Sacul.

With that settled in her mind, she focused on the Jedi in front of her.

Knight Maul was fighting a training droid on a level setting Ahsoka hadn't even known existed, so fast and fluid that the sabers were a blur. She'd known his saber wouldn't be red, of course it wouldn't. But for some reason the actual colour of it seemed incongruous against his skin and robes. It was a warm gold, both sides of it ignited at this moment. The droid seemed to be repeating a sequence Knight Maul was refining, a deflection with a twist and a high leap meant to bring the duellist within the opponent's guard.

Ahsoka stood just inside the doorway, not wishing to start off their meeting poorly by disrupting him. She thought the sequence he was working on was advanced _Djem So_ , not a common form within the Order, and she felt a small thrill at the thought that learning it might be possible if he took her on as his padawan. If there was not a war looming there were other people she could have petitioned for lessons in specific styles, but she still would have had to go to Maul for saberstaff lessons.

Whatever kind of Master he might make, she would have access to the highest levels of lightsaber training. She thought she might be able to put up with a lot, for that.

Whatever he was trying to refine was so minute that Ahsoka couldn't tell the difference between the repetitions, nor could she tell if he was pleased with his progress or not.

Finally he stopped, switching off the droid with a command and going to where he kept a towel and water. Once he'd wiped the sweat off his head and neck and had some water, he turned to her.

She'd never really looked at him openly apart from at a distance. The mask of sharply contrasted lines and geometric shapes made it hard to make out any sort of expression, if there was one to read. Ahsoka straightened her back and tried to release her apprehension to the Force. He might be an unusual Jedi, but he was a Jedi, and Master Koon approved of this master-apprentice pairing. She had to trust in his wisdom.

* * *

"I have faith in you, Maul."

The door closed behind Plo Koon, and Maul huffed out a breath and went through another few repetitions of his sequence. He was starting to become resigned to the idea that it wasn't getting any better than it was right now. It wasn't _bad_ , was the problem. He was aware that few would find fault with it. Plo Koon had gently chided him for his inability to be satisfied with what was well beyond the skill of most Jedi masters.

Maul had just… he'd once been so much _better_ than this, had felt and controlled the Force in every fibre of his being, had pushed the flow in his launch to land him exactly, perfectly balanced on his toes right where he needed to be, oriented exactly right for his next move.

That the connection to the force he'd once felt throughout his body was now limited to his upper body couldn't _not_ result in a difference to his fighting form. It was perfectly logical that it took him a fraction of a second more to feel if his cybernetic foot was positioned correctly to chain the next move.

Maul had regained much of the skill that the first few years after Naboo had lost him; both in healing and learning to work with his prosthetics, and earning himself enough standing with the Jedi Order to be allowed to train at all. It was simply… hard to be satisfied sometimes.

He'd been raised never to be satisfied. It had never been up to him to make the decision that something was good enough, and he still struggled to accept it when a Jedi, even Plo Koon in his role as mentor, told him it was. Some small, misshapen part of him might always insist that they were too easily satisfied. That they just weren't looking hard enough for his defects.

That brought him to the rest of what Plo had stopped by to tell him. That after a decade in the Temple—the first four years as patient, prisoner and then 'guest' and then the next six first as Plo's adult Padawan learner and then as Jedi Knight—the council had suddenly decided to assign him a padawan.

Maul was still unsure what to do with the shock of it. It had been long agreed he would never be put in charge of any younglings; if his patience and self control had grown equal to that of any Jedi, his own harsh upbringing left him poorly equipped for teaching a padawan. When Mace Windu had said it as an aside, it hadn't been a surprise, and even somewhat of a relief to Maul. The risk of reaching back, in some stressful moment, to the brutal lessons his own youth had contained, or overtaxing a child because he had no concept of reasonable expectations, made him want to shudder.

He'd never made up for his lack of childhood socialisation, and preferred to do solo missions or get teamed up with the select view knights who occasionally shared meals with him. For a long time he'd thought to become a Temple Guard, if they'd have him. To let his distinctive face disappear behind a mask and let the ritual and structure of that order-within-the-order shape his life. Plo and Mace Windu had refused to let him apply until he'd done a couple of missions as Knight.

Maul was mostly deployed on Shadow-adjacent missions. Not a Shadow himself, he had no real talent for deception even when makeup took care of his distinctive face, but their backup or contact or extraction. He liked working with Quinlan Vos; more often than not, that involved some theatre to get the man out of a sticky situation without blowing his cover, and Quinlan had never been judgemental about Maul's past.

Apart from accompanying Quinlan and pull him out of the shit whenever necessary, his preferred missions were emergency extractions. Where diplomacy had already failed and his intimidating appearance was an asset rather than a problem. There was something darkly gratifying at seeing relief in the faces of Jedi who had previously politely but coolly avoided him when he encountered them in the temple. He sometimes suspected that's why Mace Windu gave him those kinds of missions.

It seemed like the war had very suddenly changed the Council's ideas about the inadvisability of trusting a reformed Sith with a child.

 _She's fourteen, lost her Master on Geonosis,_ Plo had said. And _Far too much potential to warehouse her in classes until the war is over._ And _She's Togruta; she'll keep up with you, and she's assertive enough to speak up if she can't_. And _Mace has agreed to station you with me while you two get used to each other._

And finally, _'Yoda is talking to her now. I expect she will be along to meet you shortly.'_

It was too short a time to work up much in the way of nerves. Perhaps that had been the point, Maul thought with chagrin. Plo knew him well.

And here she was now, entering the training room and politely waiting until he acknowledged her. Maul wasn't particularly strong in the force talents regarding empathy; his talents and certainly his training had been in kinetic power. Nonetheless he could feel her proximity, a small supernova of nerves and excitement over a wellspring of grief for her lost mentor.

He finished his sequence and switched off the droid. Gave his breath a moment to slow while he wiped his face and head dry and took a drink, and then turned to the girl. She jumped to her feet, and bowed in that formal way Maul had never much cared for. He had joined the Jedi, but that didn't mean some of their pomp and circumstance didn't want to make him roll his eyes.

"Ahsoka Tano, Master, for your consideration as Padawan."

This seemed to Maul mostly a formality, since the council had assigned her to him, but he could understand if she wanted it to feel like a choice. Like she'd been chosen, even if it was by somebody she would never have considered asking of her own volition.

"Well met, Ahsoka Tano," he said. "You will call me Maul," he continued, just to get that clear from the start, "Or Knight Maul if you prefer. But never Master."

He knew it baffled the Jedi who didn't directly know him, that it seemed like a rejection of Jedi customs and disrespect to call Mace Windu by his first name, but he couldn't stand saying that word to anybody, and he disliked the idea immensely of being referred to by it.

She blinked, but nodded. "Yes, Ma—Maul."

He thought for a moment, having no idea of what level of formality was required here. Should have thought to ask Plo exactly how this worked. They both knew they were being thrown together because her mentor had been slain and there was a war, and would not have chosen each other without those circumstances. Nonetheless he wanted her to feel acknowledged.

He blinked at the realisation. He wanted her to feel welcome. He wouldn't have her feel like he resented her presence.

He'd never expected to have a padawan; never thought he'd be suitable for it. Now he so unexpectedly would have one, he was immediately gripped by the desire to do right by her. His horns prickled with what was at stake here. The mindhealer he still had regular sessions with might have a thing or three to say about that, but he didn't think she would think it a bad thing.

"I'm sure there are more ceremonial words for this, but I don't know what they are," he admitted, amused by her lekku twitch of surprise that he'd admit to not knowing something. "I would welcome you as my padawan, Ahsoka Tano."

She gave another very formal-looking bow of acknowledgement. Maul wondered how many lessons of comportment and Jedi decorum there were on her schedule, and what else was on there. He should probably make sure he had a copy of her curriculum so he had an idea of where she was with her training, so he'd be less likely to demand too much of her.

"There's the braiding, to symbolise the bond. During the ceremony. Master Sacul gave me my…" she trailed off and drew the string of beads forward from where it rested behind her lek.

Maul pondered that. The symbolism of it held little value to him, and he could tell that Ahsoka was torn between not wanting to replace something from her old mentor, and not wanting to be rude by saying so. On the other hand it might be good to have _some_ sort of symbol to make this new situation feel more real, and not merely convenience.

It wasn't convenience. Not to him. If he believed in the Force as some guiding power in the universe—and he wasn't always sure that he did—then he might call this a chance given to him by the Force to regain something Sidious had thought to take from him.

"Ah. I would not want to replace—" he floundered for a moment. They would need _something_ , for the ceremony. "Think about what you'd like to do to acknowledge this new partnership. Then let me know."

She acknowledged that with a nod.

They stood in silence for a long moment while Maul thought about where to go from here. It was not awkward to him, accustomed to silences, but Ahsoka visibly had to stop herself from fidgeting.

"Do you have time to practice a while?" he asked her finally, even though he already knew the rest of her afternoon was cleared for this meeting. It had taken Plo a long time to teach him the minutiae of social interactions, and it still didn't come easily. Maul supposed he would get plenty of practice in her presence.

"Oh! Yes, I—yes," she almost bounced on the balls of her feet.

"To give me an idea of where your training is," he said, sitting down on the bench, "Please show me something you have fully mastered, and after that something you have just begun learning."

He wanted to know where her saber training was, but he thought it might also show him something of her personality. He hoped it was clear enough from the request that he did not expect perfection, and that she'd be daring enough to show him something she truly was new to.

After their session, when they were walking toward the Temple zone that held the quarters, he tried to speak a little more.

"You just started on Niman?"

She nodded.

"What do you think of it so far?"

He was leaning more on Plo's conversational tactics than on any skill of his own. When he'd first become Plo's adult apprentice, the man had asked him endless questions, at times and about subjects that baffled Maul. He'd never before been asked to formulate an opinion about the content of his lessons or the flavour of his food or the style of his clothes. It had caused a good deal of stress trying to intuit what Plo wanted to hear, and Maul had been slow and hesitant to speak, expecting conversational traps around every corner. Observation of other padawan/mentor pairings and Plo's consistent acceptance of his answers no matter what they were, had eventually made him understand that it was simply the way the Jedi taught.

Indeed Ahsoka seemed to find it a normal enough question, and she happily chatted to him about her impressions of Form VI and her interest in Jar'kai. He would have plenty of ground to connect with her if this was any indication, and that was a relief.

"Do you have an inclination to any form in particular?" Maul wasn't sure from what age on Jedi were supposed to specialise, and if it was assumed that you adopted the same form as your mentor. Sacul had been a perfunctory Soresu user.

"I thought I did, but you know so many forms!" she said, clearly excited by this aspect of his mentorship. "I want to learn _all_ of them. Saberstaff like you, and jar'kai, and—"

"Two conditions," he said, holding up a finger. "One, your Soresu is good enough to blaze though the highest level of deflection practice without a single hit."

Her face fell at the mention of Soresu, a form mostly centered on blaster deflection and generally considered rather uninspiring. It was what was most likely to keep her alive when facing battle droids though, so it wasn't something he'd compromise on. He wouldn't get the chance to teach her duelling if she were dead.

"I will join you in those practice sessions; I could do with brushing up myself."

That was an untruth, but it would be a good time to get to know her better, and it wouldn't hurt to work on tandem drills.

"Two, you must pass all the required classes."

Her expression was so perfectly 'sulky teenager' that he bit down on a grin.

"Providing you meet both those conditions, I am willing to teach you lightsaber forms until you wish you'd chosen to become a farmer instead."

"Even Jar'kai?"

"Even Jar'kai."

"Cool!"

She was silent for a few moments, but he could tell there was a question bubbling.

"Have you ever done the Temple Run?"

Maul blinked at the abrupt change of subject. "You mean the obstacle course around the temple?"

She nodded enthusiastically. The Temple Run was one of the more endearing traditions of the Order. Maul had always been told his own urge to go very fast, fling himself off high things and feel the wind pull at him was some sort of character defect. Some unseemly Zabrak base urge he had to quell. He hadn't learned until he was in the Temple that it was very common among Force users, and readily indulged by the Jedi.

Some thousand years ago a couple of daredevil Jedi had set out a route through the temple… mostly along handholds in the ceilings, through high arches and crossing high walkways. Reflexes, leap length and necessary velocity made it that the entire route could only be completed by a pair of very athletic and skilled force users. The leaderboard of registered times went back hundreds of years. The record was four hundred years old. Apparently it was a tradition for mentors and their just-knighted padawans to do the run; Mace Windu and Depa Billaba had held number 2 for the past 11 years. Quinlan Vos and Aayla Secura were in the top 10.

"Will you do it with me?" she asked, with a tempered sort of eagerness in her voice.

Sacul had been a Pau'an; not one of the more athletic Jedi, Maul guessed. He had no idea where he himself fell and how his legs would influence his chances, but it was clear Ahsoka was excited to find out.

Parts of the route were easier, or had adaptations, and were used for training purposes. Maul figured they could try a part.

"If we have time to try a section before we ship out, yes," he finally said. He was already interested in trying it, but with the happy little bounce in Ahsoka's step, he further warmed to the idea.

**Author's Note:**

> The Jedi obstacle course/temple run is an idea I plugged in a SW discord at some point, so if you see it pop up in different places, that's probably why


End file.
